Justin CooperBrooklyn, NY

Artist’s Statement

Lines: The ways they delineate, create thresholds and cause thin spaces where things can exist and be indefinable for a brief moment before crossing over. My work is located in these liminal spaces and positions, dangling precariously between the hinged and unhinged. A relentless cross-pollination of media within my practice marks a restless search for these lines in both formal and conceptual manifestations. Whether drawn, spoken, or objectified, the lines contain an energy that is both earnest and utterly deadpan. Mundane materials carve out a straight-faced existence alongside notions of the sublime, both effectively canceling out the other. I seek a wobble between the humorous and the disturbing according to circumstance. There is a chameleon approach to my work wherein objects, gestures, drawings, photos, and videos look to context for definition. I am fascinated by the incongruent causing a mental misfire, a visual glitch, or a double-take and seek to visually represent the energy that is created in these situations. But ultimately any apparent separation is merely part of a wider unity, a nexus whose ultimate distillation is a simple line.